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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26683393">keep me in the pulses, keep me in the sound</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinnfameron/pseuds/dinnfameron'>dinnfameron</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Schitt's Creek</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, David Rose Deserves Nice Things, Drunk David Rose, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Mushy af, POV David Rose, Post-Canon, david rose loves his people very much, idk man it's just summertime vibes, soft as a goddamn baby bunny</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:26:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,134</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26683393</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinnfameron/pseuds/dinnfameron</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>David Rose spends his birthday weekend at a lake house with his favorite people, gets wine drunk, and muses on how much he loves them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alexis Rose &amp; David Rose, Patrick Brewer &amp; Alexis Rose, Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd &amp; David Rose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>201</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>keep me in the pulses, keep me in the sound</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this almost a month ago but just got around to editing it oops!</p><p>Much like David in this, I went to a friend’s lake house for my birthday weekend and got mildly sunburnt and moderately wine drunk and deeply tender for the people who were with me, so of course I had to write it through a David Rose lens. Please to enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>David linked his ankle with Stevie’s. They were in matching inner tubes that Patrick had very thoughtfully bought for them, but the slight breeze over the water kept drifting them apart if they weren’t affixed to each other in one way or another.</p><p>David was sipping chilled wine from a Rose Apothecary insulated travel mug. He’d been hesitant about using it in the lake at first. But then Stevie had snatched it from him and flung it unceremoniously into the water, looking smug as it bobbed on the surface rather than sunk.</p><p>Stevie, for her part, simply brought the entire bottle of wine into her inner tube. She’d thoughtfully ensconced the base of it in a koozie so the glass wouldn’t overheat in the sun where she held it. She took a generous sip every few minutes, and David wasn’t actively counting but he thought she might be on her third bottle since they’d starting drinking late that morning. He didn’t know how many times he’d filled his own mug, but he felt warm and loose as he floated on the water.  </p><p>The sky was a soothing expanse of blue. It seemed bluer here, somehow, over the lake. Bigger, certainly. David found his breathing came easier under it.</p><p>“Does the sky seem bluer to you?” he asked Stevie, his words coming out soft and slow.</p><p>“Mhmm,” she affirmed beside him, but he could see beneath her sunglasses that her eyes were closed.</p><p>The whole thing had been Stevie’s idea, allegedly. A weekend trip to a lake house she’d ostensibly found on one of those vacation rental sites. The Rosebud Motel Group had just finished launching a bunch of new properties in the greater Winnipeg area to great success, with Stevie spearheading the project. David had barely seen her in months, and when she’d called him with the lake house pitch she sounded harried and even more irritable than normal.</p><p>“I need to not be a businesswoman for a few days, David,” she’d pled, trying to convince him to agree to the trip. “I want to go back to being an acerbic drunk who shirks her responsibilities, like the old days.”</p><p>It also happened to be David’s birthday that weekend, and she’d thrown this factoid at him like it was some sort of inevitability that they should mark it in a big way.</p><p>In reality, David was pretty sure it was all Patrick’s idea. Other than their wedding, honeymoon, and one very brief, very hectic visit to see Alexis’s new place in New York, they hadn’t taken a break from the store in three years. David had what he felt was an incredibly rational fear that if they made themselves unavailable for more than a day or two, all their customers would forget about them, and they’d have to close due to lack of business.</p><p>Patrick had been trying to talk David into a quick getaway for months, to no avail. If he'd felt the need to go behind David’s back to his best friend, and if the two of them had devised some little scheme to get him to take an actual vacation, well. David certainly wasn’t going to call them on it.</p><p>A loud splash and spray of water pulled David from his reverie. Stevie grimaced next to him, grumpily brushed the water from her legs.</p><p>Patrick’s head popped up out of the water beside him. He wiped his face with both hands.</p><p>“Did you see my cannonball, David?”</p><p>David couldn’t even be mad about the splashing. He couldn’t be mad at the man who, he strongly suspected, had made all of this happen for them. And after all, Patrick was on vacation, too. He deserved to have a little fun.</p><p>“Very nice, honey.”</p><p>“Maybe you could do it from literally any other part of the dock next time,” Stevie suggested.</p><p>“But you guys looked hot, out here in the sun,” Patrick said. He pulled himself up just enough on David’s innertube to cross his arms and hold himself there. “I was just trying to help you cool off.”</p><p>“Such a nice guy,” Stevie said, tilting her head back and letting her eyes slip shut again. “Splash me again and die.”</p><p>Patrick had freckles on his shoulders that weren’t there before, David noticed. His cheeks were still pink from where he’d gotten slightly sunburned the day before, and the tips of his hair were gold where the water droplets caught the sun. He looked breathtaking. Patrick caught him staring and smirked, kicking his legs in the water enough to bring his mouth up to catch David’s lips in a quick kiss.</p><p>“See something you like?” he whispered against David’s mouth before letting himself slip back into the water.</p><p>“I was just wondering when the last time was you reapplied your sunscreen?” David asked innocently, though the catch in his voice might have given him away.</p><p>“Why, you wanna watch?”</p><p>“Friendly reminder that it would be incredibly easy to murder you both and make it look like an accidental drowning out here,” Stevie murmured beside them.</p><p>David rolled his lips between his teeth to hide his smile and watched his husband backstroke seductively back toward the dock, never breaking eye contact with David until he smacked his arm into the ladder. God, what a dork.</p><p>Alexis was sitting on the dock beside the ladder, sipping a peach spritzer and gliding her feet back and forth in the water, her phone in her hand. Whether it had been Patrick or Stevie’s idea to surprise him by inviting Alexis, well. He owed that person either a very nice bottle of wine or a very nice blow job, depending on which of them it was. </p><p>She was seeing someone, and although she hadn’t said much other than, “Shut <em>up</em>, David, it’s new,” he noticed the small smile that tugged at her lips every time she dipped her head to read a text. David planned to grill her about it later, but it could wait. He just hoped she was being treated well. She deserved that.</p><p>Patrick climbed the ladder and, when he reached the top, he leaned over Alexis and shook the water out of his hair like a dog.</p><p>“Oh my god, ew, Patrick!” Alexis shrieked and slapped his legs, but Patrick only laughed. </p><p>Patrick loved having a sister to torture, David knew. Loved it almost as much as he loved having David to torture. But more than that, he obviously also loved having a sister to take care of. Almost as much as he loved having David to take care of.</p><p>David had been watching them all weekend, and it made him soft in a way he’d never admit to see how his husband cared for his sister. How Patrick had carried in her bags from the car, made sure over and over that she had everything she needed, asked her thoughtful questions about her life in New York and really listened to the answers, told her how proud he was of everything she was doing.  </p><p>Alexis didn’t need someone to take care of her, not like David did, and God knew she had plenty of people who did things for her. There was always someone around to give Alexis whatever she wanted. But the list of people who genuinely cared for and about her, who encouraged her and nurtured her and celebrated her and <em>saw</em> her, was as short as David’s list was, and held many of the same names, with Patrick having made a space for himself firmly near the top.  </p><p>David couldn’t help but laugh as he watched Alexis glare at Patrick’s back as he retreated into the cabin, presumably to grab more sunscreen. She’d get him back eventually, if he didn’t do something sufficiently sweet and adorable to make her forgive him first.</p><p>Sure enough, Patrick came back out a few minutes later with not only the sunscreen but a towel and an ice cold apology spritzer for Alexis, which he thoughtfully opened for her before handing it off. He dabbed her with the towel where he'd gotten water on her and she tapped him once on the back of his hand, absolving him. David watched them with a secret smile on his face.</p><p>After a while, Stevie agreed to a race with Patrick to see who could swim to the other side of the lake and back first. David was a little concerned that Stevie shouldn’t be swimming. She was probably made up of more wine than water herself at this point. But she seemed determined, and Patrick was right beside her, so it was probably fine.</p><p>Alexis ended up taking over Stevie’s empty innertube. They didn’t say much, just reveled in the quiet comfort and relaxation that stretched over them, their pinkies linked loosely between them so they didn’t get separated by the breeze.</p><p>“Is he nice?” David asked after a while.</p><p>It was strange, he thought, that<em> that’s</em> the first thing he would ask. Past David Rose would’ve never bothered to ask his sister if the guy she was dating was <em>nice</em>. If he would have bothered to ask her anything at all. Present David Rose understands the value of nice, though. The rarity of it. Alexis seemed to know just what he meant.</p><p>“Yeah. Yes, he’s nice,” she said quietly.</p><p>David stayed in the water long after his skin had turned wrinkly and gross, even after Patrick announced he was going to go start on dinner and Alexis offered to help. After Stevie finished her <strong>-redacted-</strong> bottle of wine and unceremoniously rolled herself out of the innertube and sloshed over to the ladder.</p><p>David stayed until the sun slanted long and golden across the water and finally dipped below the tree line. He hauled himself out then and went inside.</p><p>It wasn’t anything fancy, the cabin on the lake. Tucked into the back corner of a private nature reserve and perched right on the edge of the water, it would be impossible to find without explicit directions from someone who’d been there before. It had been built originally as a fishing cabin for the owner and his buddies. But there was something homey about it, David felt. A warm, relaxed energy that set him at ease immediately. Or maybe it was just who he was there with.</p><p>He stepped into the shower and rinsed the lake water from his skin and hair. He worked his way through an adapted after sun skincare routine, stopping to set the aloe and witch hazel spray out for Patrick, who never failed to burn no matter how many times he reapplied his sunscreen.</p><p>He slipped into some dry clothes and made his way to the kitchen to fix himself a nice cucumber water. He could smell the chicken cooking over the fire outside. A smattering of sides was prepped and ready on the counter. He heard the unmistakable sound of his husband’s voice and acoustic guitar drifting through the open window and followed the sound.</p><p> </p><p><em>Feel that sun just hold you right</em> <em><br/>
Leave you burning down the night</em></p><p> </p><p>David rounded the corner of the back deck to find that Patrick, Stevie, and Alexis had made themselves comfy under the shelter house beside the fire pit. Alexis was curled up in a hammock chair that hung from the ceiling, a light shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her phone gripped loosely in her hands as she watched Patrick with a faraway look on her face. Stevie was sprawled in a camping chair, one leg tucked underneath her, her head tipped back and eyes closed. Patrick was on top of the picnic table, hunched over his guitar, picking out the notes like an afterthought. His voice rang out rich and clear.</p><p> </p><p><em>We came with our best lines</em> <em><br/>
Told them like jokes<br/>
If I could have known then we were dying to get gone<br/>
I can't believe we get just one</em></p><p>
  
</p><p>David stood there a moment, frozen by the sight of his husband serenading his sister-slash-best-friend and best-friend-slash-platonic-soulmate, before he finally moved to join them. He straddled the bench next to where Patrick’s feet were planted, and they exchanged a smile. Patrick stopped singing, picking out notes idly on the guitar. David wasn’t sure he was even playing a song anymore.</p><p>“We’re doing this again next year,” Alexis asserted suddenly. “David? We’re doing this again next year.”</p><p>“Definitely,” Stevie agreed, voice soft and eyes still closed. “If not sooner.”</p><p>David looked at Patrick and arched an eyebrow.</p><p>“Up to you,” Patrick said.</p><p>“Definitely,” David echoed. “Next year.”</p><p>Patrick picked the song back up where he’d dropped it, smiling softly back at David as the last of the daylight faded over the horizon.</p><p> </p><p><em>Let all things be as they will</em> <em><br/>
Let my heart beat itself still</em></p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Patrick is singing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaoRFrgIcJo">Just One</a> by Blind Pilot, which always makes me a little sad and nostalgic for a moment that’s still happening. </p><p>Title is also from Blind Pilot: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFEuo9-uB0g">New York</a>.</p><p> </p><p>I'm <a href="https://dinnfameron.tumblr.com">dinnfameron</a> on tumblr  come say hiiii.</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
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    <li>
        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27149611">[Podfic] keep me in the pulses, keep me in the sound</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfLaundryBaskets/pseuds/GoLBPodfics">GoLBPodfics (GodOfLaundryBaskets)</a>
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